CoV Spends $317k on Office Furniture
 

https://globalnews.ca/news/7339783/v...all-furniture/

Disgusting. I can tell you right now, I don't sit at a $1000+ chair in my office.

These workers and politicians who spend your hard earned and payed tax dollars on frivolous things like this should be ashamed, and you should all be furious about this type of behaviour.

I dont give a shit how ergonomic the chairs are, unless you are google or FB, or any company like that raking in the money faster than you can spend it, you have no right to take stakeholder money and spend it buying ultra high end furniture, just so you can sit your lazy ass on it doing fuck all for the tax paying population.

All this fight for democracy in the world... WHY? democracy is bullshit, its gotten fucked by shitty politicians that can't do anything but think about themselves. At least in a dictatorship we dont have to pay for all the bureaucracy and wastefulness, and even if it was wasteful, it would be one persons wastefulness, not the thousands we currently waste on.

Disgusting.

more residential streets need metered parking

oh and gotta ask the province for covid bailout because we managed to blow 30 years of property tax gains over a few rocky months

Some points/comments from reddit

I'm okay with this. You need to equip your staff properly. The order may have been made in May, but the money was most certainly committed to the renovation well in advance. You can't just back out of a contract without penalties. People see a dollar sign and freak out. The article even says that, under the contract, they won't be paying retail price.

Office furniture, even if it's expensive, is an asset. Herman Miller chairs come with 12 year warranty and are reliable. They are still worth a lot of money years after. You can sell them back out 10 years later for $500 and someone would still buy it.

Having said that, i don't actually like Herman Miller. I prefer Steelcase.

the way i see it: you cant ask to cut essential services like policing and be dealing with an overdose crisis while placing your butts on MoMA pieces

'well order went in well before the pandemic' is a cop out

retail or not, how big is 2F at city hall? doesn't that make it worse that it's closer to cost AND still racked up over 300k on furnishing alone?

meanwhile most organizations are cutting back because of wfh, fine go through with it but dont tell me they're just gonna collect dust in offices at 20% capacity

lol @ reddit guy who thinks furniture from 2011 is last era, born yesterday maybe?

Bad optics and bad timing, of course you can cancel your order.

So many construction projects, even ones that had the green light were cancelled or put on hold due to covid. I mean most of those were private companies so they actually have to use logic and a little bit of business awareness in their decision making.

If I was a Vancouver tax payer I would not have a problem with them spending money on furniture or the amount they spent but use a little common sense when you're crying you have no money don't be spending money on shit that you really can live without for a while until things are a little more normal.

I didn’t open the article, but good ergonomics are actually fairly important in this day and age as we all know city workers are about as entitled and whiny as they come.

Workplace injuries cost companies a lot of money. The more claims the higher your premiums (or less your discount). Time off work... blah blah blah. Not to mention decent quality furniture will actually last a long time. The few city halls I’ve walked though are ancient with furniture to match. That stuff from the 70’s wasn’t cheap either.

I wouldn’t be so quick to judge, they probably waste more money in more stupid places then some decent quality furniture.

It has it's hidden pros and obvious cons in my mind.

The timing definitely makes it look bad in the public eye but it could be beneficial in compo claims. I can tell you first hand they've a healthy acceptable paycheck every two weeks with quite the sick plan which gets abused, followed by knowing they've job security. Not everyone abuses it, I haven't taken a sick day in 6 years and my chair has duct tape on the armrest because I ripped the padding open a few years ago.
I do know of a few people who've become known as "compo queens" who go off for weeks/months over the stupidest things you could imagine. They'll play volleyball or something outside of work hours and get a sore wrist then come go to work the next day and go make a first aid claim that the crappy mouse and pad they use have been irritating their wrist. Cool.. go see a Doctor. Dr. says to ice it for a week and now they're sitting at home with a paycheck watching the price is right every day while your tax money is paying for it and they get to keep their vacation hours.

Cut out the "culprit" (the crap office chairs that give them back pain with a 6 month compo vacation) and it should reduce the credibility of people making those claims. They'll still happen, but they shouldn't as much as they do now.

Do I agree with all of this? No. Man up and use whats available or buy used office chairs/desks from a warehouse that specifically sells used items for a huge discount. As much as I'd like to say man up, I can't. Believe it or not most of the claims I've ever seen are by women who work in offices who will go as far as going on stress leave because they don't like the person they have to sit beside.. One more waste of tax dollars - There's 5 individuals I know of who complained about sitting all day and thousands were spent on buying them motorized desk risers... I've never once seen them use them.

TL;DR: Crap furniture = pathetic fake compo claims resulting in paid staycations from what I've seen. Those that do get new furniture items have significantly reduced complaints and "work related injuries".

I can go on but I won't.

/rant

Shit mayor Kennedy Stewart - “We won’t take the poison chalice of a govt. loan to bail out CoV”

A month later “yes let’s proceed with a 2 million dollar city hall Reno”

Guy is a fucking imbecile.

To everyone saying good chairs are an investment etc. I don’t disagree. However, how many CoV staffers are actually working from city hall still? They just said on the news much of this office furniture is to refurbish old rooms which have not been used in quite some time. If you’re just filling board rooms and offices that aren’t going to be used until covid is behind us, this is a huge misstep.

Also you’re dreaming if you think the incompetent beaucracy that exists within city hall would ever actually follow through on a warantee claim on a chair as opposed to burying it in a coat closet until it gets thrown out

Depending on the number of staff, 300k might not be that much. You certainly don't expect going into CoV's office and sitting on Ikea furniture.

I don't feel that this was worth reporting. $317K for office furniture is a drop in the bucket. My personal opinion is they made a sound decision in buying furniture that is built to last, with a solid warranty. The public is taking this out of proportion. COVID or not, the city's procurement team likely took advantage of the situation, made a deal with the distributor or Herman Miller directly, and got a discount with the bulk purchase. I mean, it's not like the City took the $317K and spent it at No. 5 orange to woo Chinese investors to buy and build more homes for overseas investments.

Lots of assumptions in your rant man.

You missed the Covid thread? Half of people on RS were debating which $1,500+ chair to buy... you’re not seeing the big picture, you make people sit in shit chairs all day and they get hooped physically from it they miss work and cost the system a tonne of money that way.

Bad timing? Maybe... But $317K is nothing in a city budget. Fuck I hate Stewart as much as anyone else does, but this is a weird place to direct your vitriol, bashing the lower end staff who are just trying to have a decent spot to work in.

Also the “AlL GoVeRNmEnT WorKeRS do NOTHiNg” rant is the oldest eyeroll in the book, I work on a fed system not CoV but I know people over at CoV they’re busier than shit and so am I... I can name a whole bunch of people in private that are playing video games and watching Netflix half the day while they’re in work from home. For the record, I sit in a chair I found going to surplus in a corner somewhere, but I’m just thankful I’ve got good health and not in chronic pain of any sort, I don’t feel any ill will toward people around me that got assessed by a professional and needed a better chair or whatnot. Appreciate what you have instead of spitting toxicity because you think you understand another persons plight?

And asking for a dictatorship for transparency/waste reduction? Bro... lost your damn mind hahaha! Dictator would have bough the furniture for 10x the price from his brother who is suddenly a “furniture importer” and half of it wouldn’t even actually exist and then given the furniture out to their family and friends and no one would ever know about it or see the bill. They don’t exactly have FOI in those places man...

Covid state of mind

As others have said quality office equipment isn't cheap but compared to other costs it's peanuts. A $1k chair is good for 10+ years. Paying $100/yr to ensure someone you're paying $50k+/yr is comfortable seems like a no brainer to me. Not to mention a quick search said the overall city operating costs are $1.6B/yr. I'm sure they've got waste, but maybe look at something bigger than something that works out to 0.002% of the budget.

Without a breakdown of what they actually bought though this article is especially worthless. It may be getting used less now but that just means it'll last longer, and buying in bulk right now they may have been able to get an even better discount than normal because most people aren't buying office equipment now.

I work for COV and my office was one of the first in the City to buy Herman Millar chairs, I can tell you that we've had them since 2009, they have been sat the shit out of for 11 years and we've only had 1 single chair break and zero others needing any type of maintenance at all. I've bought those "nice looking" staples chairs before and they just go to shits after a couple years and the ergonomics suck, how much is an injury worth?

i was going to post something similar.

also, some firms ensure field staff have the right/best tools to do their job, office staff should be provided with proper tools to do theirs as well.

good point. If most are meetings are now virtual, and appears to be going that way, this should be re-assessed to staff/areas where it needs to be used (i.e. the new normal). I'm sure many large firms are assessing their office space needs (downsizing) and IT infrastructure (upgrading) moving forward. I suppose a slightly diff scenario here in that city hall won't be used for anything else other than city use so no downsizing per se, but the timing/optics certainly isn't the greatest. i wonder if the purchase couldn't be halted or cancelled without a hefty penalty, such as a 30% restocking fee and forced to go through with it regardless, or if it required a non-refundable 50% down payment or something.

Global mentioned that these chairs were part of a larger 2.X million dollar renovation for rooms within city hall that “haven’t been renovated in 30 years”

So I think there’s more to it than just the office chairs which again, I’m not completely against but timing is poor.

Zero problems with this. Office furniture is expensive, good office furniture is even more expensive. CoV can't possibly buy used furniture due to liability problems, and honestly replacing a $100 chair every year is probably less cost effective than buying a $1200 chair that works for 10 years as there's costs, inefficiencies, and work time lost that goes into buying and replacing a $100 chair 10x.

Why don't we talk about why GlobalNews is spitting out sensationalist articles like these to stir the already boiling over pot unnecessarily? This is only news to people who know nothing about how to run a business.

Next thing you know the maintenance team of BCHydro takes delivery of an order of $1M equipment and someone makes a fuss about nothing.

Non-news

Our campus purchased thousands of office chairs over 6 years ago, running on to 7. They're no Herman Miller, but let's just say it's the Toyota Tercel of the 90s equivalent in terms of brand/make/model.

While they did hold up against the test of time, they are now shipping them to employees who need them to accommodate the work-from-home situation, while purchasing new chairs (I believe Steelcase or Herman Miller this time hahaha) but in smaller quantities to meet the "new norm" of back-to-office work health and safety work policies.

We once had the stereotypical bland and boring office furniture, especially chairs, that were just so bad for you. We had a lot of staff, especially our technicians go on short and long term disability due to poor ergonomics. The cost to the company to help them get rehab and physio etc. was tremendous, and quite frankly quite horrific. As a result of the new chairs, ergonomic related injuries were reduced drastically by over 90%.

Edit: Let's not forget, companies, institutions and the like, will be ramping up back-to-work programs where people slowly come back to their places of work. Albeit not full time, but staggered and maybe once or twice a week.

Speaking for myself only, the place I work at has allowed people to come back to work based on business requirements (i.e. requirement to access labs for research and development) and essential service staff (i.e. building maintenance and facilities staff) Next year, employees will have the option of coming back to the office, limited to once or twice a week only. So to say that the office furniture purchased during this time is a waste of time/space/money, is not exactly true.

More so, logically, you want to decommission your old furniture with the least amount of people around, while limiting the amount of people bringing in the new furniture, and slowly introduce your employees back to the office in phases. It cost more to have companies come in to decommission furniture after business hours, and there is often a premium to it; Businesses like this exist,and are very profitable. Last thing we need is a rave party of gatherings at the office with hundreds of people sitting beside one another, right?

While I agree that I hate these kind of sensationalist/sob stories that global seems to have a tendency to run I think given the current state of the CoV it’s good to hold their feet to the fire as often as possible even if it is just to bring to light their actions to residents who otherwise would be ignorant to them.

Their reporting on the matter and their chopped up clip of the city official explaining where the money is going leaves somthing to be desired however

Those who are mad about this don't think workplace injuries from bad ergonomics exist.

A 300K expenditure for those kinds of chairs, isn't it insurance for their insurance?

You only get ONE body, one spine, one neck. Treat them well.

I'm not a CoV tax payer so I don't care how much the chairs cost. However, just a few months ago the mayor was screaming about how the City was going to go broke.

Maybe people would feel better about the $1000 chairs if the people who sat in them didn't mismanage the finances so badly that the city was on the brink of bankruptcy.

lol is this your protest against the city's decision? :D

(I'm kidding)

As others have said in the thread, I don't think the full story is being shared, and likely the statements and references were edited to sensationalize the article. The purchase of the furniture could have possibly taken place late last year, allowing the manufacturer/distributor to place the order as part of a production run, thus allowing some additional lead time. Factor in the COVID situation, production likely was stalled, and the financial commitment was already legally binding and committed.

I personally did not read into the details of how or what the mayor cited the city being on the brink of bankruptcy, but like any business, you need a steady stream of cash flow in order to stay afloat, or you default, or go into arrears. There are operational activities you simply cannot skimp on, such as garbage collection/waste, and other essential services. if any of you guys remember the garbage strike and transit strike back in the early 2000s - man, that was terrible. Could it be that the mayor was the boy who cried wolf in anticipation of the city's financial failure? I'm not sure.

some of their meeting rooms are quite dated to put it nicely...with furniture to match

It's ok, you'll be happy to know at least that the COV standard for sit stand desks are Steelcase lol